


And This Is What The Devil Does

by pavilargo



Category: 8MM (1999)
Genre: Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25356235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pavilargo/pseuds/pavilargo
Summary: A day in the life of ex-Hard Spank frontman Max California.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	And This Is What The Devil Does

**Author's Note:**

> I am not immune to Joaquin Phoenix.

**I. Via Dolorosa**

It was the middle of July and the temperature was nearing double digits as Max California walked to work, deep in the heart of the concrete desert oasis that was Los Angeles. If he had just gone to school and gotten a degree like a normal person he could have gotten some sort of well-paying office job with vacation time, he thought begrudgingly; he could practically hear his mother’s voice intrusively butting through his sweat-drenched forehead and ripping through his thoughts like a silver bullet through a vampire’s heart. He certainly felt something like a vampire, burning in the heat like he was — or perhaps the Wicked Witch, slowly melting into a puddle of liquified flesh and cheap eyeliner.

At least work was close enough to his apartment that he did not have to waste money on bus fare or gas.

Max came to a crosswalk and stopped. He huffed and wiped his brow as he lifted his head, his eyes, previously glued to the sidewalk, glancing up to stare instead at the little pedestrian traffic signal. Lit up on the sign was the glowing red hand that symbolized an unmistakable lack of permission to proceed, but with a quick glance in both directions it was clear that no cars were looking to turn or cross, so Max rushed through the intersection quickly, refusing to let an inanimate object be the boss of him today.

Just as his feet hit the curb on the other side of the crosswalk, a police car’s sirens blared from behind him and he bristled and tensed, hands clenching into fists. But it seemed that the cops had more pressing matters to deal with than a jaywalking punk, for the car went as fast as it had come, zipping down the road with such acceleration that a whoosh of air brushed Max’s bare midriff. The cop car was followed a moment later by two others, both speeding down the city street towards some unknown destination. Max stood, watching as they disappeared into the horizon, into the thick jungle of skyscrapers and traffic with which the city was so densely populated. Once they were gone Max lingered a moment longer still, listening and watching for any further police appearances, but nothing came aside from the steady flow of typical morning drivers, and he soon continued his daily pilgrimage.

That was simply the fate of Los Angeles living: emergency vehicles rushing down busy streets and sirens wailing like banshees every night, audible in every corner of the city. How many people died here every day? Max pondered this question as he wiped the sweat from his brow again. Across the street a cat pounced at a pigeon. The cat was probably homeless and starving, as there were a great deal of stray alley cats around the city. At a bus stop a man was lying, huddled for shade beneath the plastic roof that guarded the little bench. He was likely in the same boat as the cat, Max thought.

The walk to work was a fitting reminder of Max’s dreams, the ones both achieved and failed- er, still a work in progress. He had come to Los Angeles with the same wide-eyed wonder as every other newcomer with big dreams and a passion for art and music and creation. And, well, he had certainly been thrown right into the core essence of Los Angeles. This was the world he had been fantasizing of between every song that he practiced on his guitar, the motivation behind every word that he scribbled down in his lyric book. He jaywalked through another crosswalk and made it to the block that held his shop, nestled amongst boarded windows and other poverty-stricken shopfronts with varying degrees of dinginess, its depressing, faded pink sign visible even from the end of the street. At least, Max thought, Southern California’s lack of humidity kept his Aqua Net devil horns relatively intact despite the heat.

After all, how else was he supposed to style his hair, working in a place like this? 

  
**II. Wonderland**

“Would you like to add some lube to your purchase today?” Max’s drawled with a hint of sarcasm in his tone, the comedy of the professionalism juxtaposed with the content of the sentence not lost on him. “We’ve got a sale going, the little bottles here are buy-one-get-one-half-off.”

“Oh! No, I’ll be fine.”

“I dunno, ma’am,” Max chuckled a little, rubbing the back of his neck and eyeing the dildo that he was in the process of ringing up, “If I saw someone cram this thing in without any lube I’d be pretty fucking impressed.”

“Oh, and you’re some sort of pussy expert, are you?”

Max laughed again, his cheeks flushing slightly. “I got hired here, didn’t I?”

“I have a feeling they hired you for your ability to pitch a sale, not your ability to gauge vagina durability. Thank you anyway, sir.” The woman flashed a sly smile, yanked the now-bagged dildo from Max’s hands, and walked off.

Max watched the customer exit the store with a grin, amused by the banter and thankful for the chance to practice it. Despite the eccentricity of the store’s stocks, the job did not tend to be significantly more exciting than any other behind-the-counter retail position most of the time. Most days were long and dull, filled with little excitement save for the chance to say words like “vagina” or “anal,” which had lost its immediate humor long ago but still retained a lingering, long term absurdity. At times he would just stare dully, zoning out at the various porno previews playing endlessly on the televisions around the shop, and sometimes he would bring books in and read them as he waited for customers to approach him with questions or to check out, and at other times he would try to read the customers themselves, people watching and making a game of trying to determine who each person was.

Presently, Max spotted a younger looking girl, he would have guessed in her late teens or early twenties. She was looking around wide eyed, like some prey animal in fear of pursuit of an invisible enemy. In her nervousness she all but bumped into a rack of VHS tapes, jumped back in surprise, and nearly ran directly into a shelf of vibrators.

Max laughed. “They’re just sex toys, they won’t bite you,” he called out. The girl jumped again and looked over to him, her face turning a deep red, and then hurriedly looked away, burying herself into a shelf of pocket pussies in what Max assumed was only an excuse not to look in his direction any longer.

He snorted and turned away, not wanting to torment the girl any longer; every so often someone like that came in, a shy newbie to the world of sex who was clearly afraid to even be seen in there, as if they thought anyone else in the store was judging them, as if they felt _so_ superior to the other degenerates looking through aisles of sex toys and pornography. It was funny, and a bit annoying, too. Innocence was a weird concept to Max, not something he particularly identified with or even understood — Having innocence, valuing innocence, judging innocence or a lack thereof. It felt very foreign to him.

And Max supposed it was a bit sad, too. Sometimes, on especially slow days, he would play an extended version of his people watching game, and aside from just studying their immediate selves, he would then begin to make bets with himself on if he would see them again, on how frequently they would return. Would they become a porn addict? Throw all of their money down the drain for increasingly complex sex toys? How deep into this strange underworld of perverts would they end up? Would he see that girl on the back of the next box of magazines he set out?

The nervous girl ran out without buying anything, and Max shrugged, seeking the next person to turn into his helpless mental victim. He was a socially anxious person’s nightmare, he thought, making such quick judgments about strangers over such trivial details, summing them up as they purveyed wares related to the most intimate parts of their lives.

A man dressed in business attire was in the corner, skimming through magazines with a scowl. Repressed homosexual.

The woman in the back by the VHS tapes was most certainly looking for something racially insensitive, Max could practically see it on her face.

An ambulance and two police cars sped down the road outside, sirens blaring. C’est LA.

Day in and day out, this was what it was like here. When his spirits dipped especially low, Max would sometimes imagine working in a “normal” retail job in the city, somewhere family friendly and sane. He had worked similar minimum wage jobs back home, fast food joints or popular retail chains, and they had been so dreadfully boring and so painfully draining that he promised he would never work for the corporate mainstream again, would never let his life be wasted away behind the counter of some chain company, yelled at by old ladies and trying to ignore crying children, having pennies thrown like scraps by stingy managers while the megacorp CEOs lived like kings. The sex shop job was far from perfect, but it beat working for The Man, Max figured.

There was a girl looking at the bargain rack, picking up to inspect the discount dicks with candy cane stripes from the Christmas collection. Was she a first timer, or was she just cheap? Max wondered. Maybe she just really wanted to fuck Santa Claus.

The balding man in the vest and glasses who had just walked through the door was going to look around the penetrables for a bit before walking to the front desk and asking if the store was selling anything more realistic. Max recognized that type from a mile away.

The inherent intrigue that this job had kept it survivable. In the heat of the summer he was able to make a living doing a relatively low-stress job in an air conditioned room in the heart of Los Angeles, and he got to watch all sorts of characters, far more interesting folk than the kind who he would have dealt with at some sort of chain retail store, that was for sure. What else could Max possibly ask for? Where else could he see little alternative couples browsing around for new bondage gear, or have the honor to talk with Christian men guiltily buying silicone vaginas and porn magazines? Where else could he play over the hyperspecific fantasy of having to remain vigilant in keeping an eye out for undercover cops showing up to try to innocuously ask about the glory holes in the back?

“Excuse me?”

Max was ripped from his thoughts and he turned, startled, to face a woman at the front of the counter. She was one of those gloomy trad goths, the Morticia-Addams-in-training type. He snorted out a little chuckle. “Can I help you, Siouxsie Sioux?”

“Do you have any rabbits in stock?”

“Nah, sorry, out of stock ‘till next week,” Max shook his head regretfully. “But we have some other vibes over there.” He pointed to the corner, where two guys - a couple, probably - were eyeing the colorful assortment of buttplugs. “Let me know if you got any other questions.”

“Thanks, Keith Flint,” The woman’s darkened lips twitched a little, and Max was pretty proud of his ability to get a half-smile from such an aesthetically melancholic individual. “I like your look. You in a band or something?”

Max lit up for a moment, opening his mouth with an eagerness that was suddenly stifled. “Yeah! Well, er, kind of. …Not really. Uh, I used to be. I, y’know, fuck around with a guitar and all, but I don’t have a new band together yet.” The words came out a bit of a stumbling ramble, but the woman smiled a little more, so he hoped that he had gotten the job done and managed to impress her. That, or she just thought he was cute — in the pity way, not the sexy way. Max knew that the difference between such forms of “cute” was astronomical. And although he was not the type to be awkward in conversation, having decent enough people skills and a quick mind and tongue, he supposed she had struck a bit of a weak spot that he had not quite managed to patch up since his first attempt at forming a band had fallen apart.

The woman took a red marker from the counter that Max would typically give a buyer to sign their name on a receipt, and then took Max by the wrist and scribbled a name and number on his arm. “Cool. Call me if you ever book a gig, yeah?”

Max scoffed a little and chuckled, flustered. “Uh- Sure, yeah, I’ll be sure to,” he mumbled. The woman gave him a smile and walked to the vibrators that he had pointed her to a moment earlier.

Max glanced down to his arm, his cheeks admittedly warmer now. He liked women, especially alternative women like the ones who frequently danced at the clubs that he went to, who were strong and confident, who he imagined could smack him around a bit. He was easily smitten with women who seemed capable of beating his ass with the various paddles that were held within the shop’s bondage section, and one of the perks of a job like this was that a decent number of women like that tended to come in. And he was aware that he was not an unattractive fellow.

Still, there was a sinking sensation in the pit of Max’s stomach as he watched the goth woman he had been speaking with walk off. _If you ever book a gig…_ Being realistic, that was a long way off. It felt like it had taken a lifetime just to gather up the money and courage to drop everything and leave for Los Angeles in the first place, not to mention finding income and a place to live. The first attempt at forming a band had gone terribly, and it would certainly take at least one or two more lifetimes to form a new band, create enough songs to fill a setlist, and find a venue that he could afford to perform at that would actually risk letting a newcomer onto the stage. It was exhausting to think about, and just dwelling for a few moments on everything that had not yet been done and goals that he had not yet managed to meet was enough to make the minimum wage that he was getting with each hour that he stood behind the counter directing strangers to dildos and porn feel more and more meager.

The goth woman left the store without returning to the counter, so it seemed that none of the other vibrators were good enough for her.

“Hey, buddy,” a man’s voice called out in a grouchy croak, “I been looking through your cocksleeves and was just wondering if you got anything more realistic in the back… Something with asscheeks and all, ya know what I mean?” 

  
**III. Suck/Exorcism**

One of the things that Max never failed to appreciate when it came to living in Los Angeles was the fact that he never had to worry about there being something to do after work. Every night, the city was bustling and alive, filled to the brim with people of all walks of life doing anything and everything imaginable. On some days Max honestly had no energy for any of it, and all that he could possibly bring himself to commit to was the dull walk home to his little apartment to collapse into his bed for the night. However, after a long day of gruellingly menial labor, it tended to be the polar opposite that Max craved to wind down and break free of the headspace that he had gotten trapped in, the customer service retail mindset that made him feel like he was caged in a “thanks, have a good one” prison. The louder, more chaotic, the livelier, the flashier, and the more crowded the better.

So instead of heading home, Max took a bus downtown, even deeper into the oasis city, to one of the bustling punky nightclubs full of freaks and weirdos with piercings and tattoos that their parents likely told them would keep them unemployed for life. This particular club was the sort of place where bondage and fetish gear ran rampant — he had originally found this place through sex shop connections, unsurprisingly. One could be spanked and whipped by beautiful ladies or muscular men to their heart’s content, in front of a whole crowd of spectating deviants. Clothing optional, leather encouraged.

It was the most alive Max ever really felt, being in a place like this. It was the very definition of alive, he thought, in comparison to the endless monotony of his days trying to scrape together savings for his music, standing and waiting for something interesting to tear through the thick wall of boredom that built itself up, brick by brick, with each barely-above-five-dollar hour of work.

The darkness of the club was lit by sporadic bursts of flashing colored lights. Cigarette and marijuana smoke filled the air and Max looked up to see the silhouette of dancers on raised platforms, the lights occasionally falling on them and revealing the lingerie and latex that they wore. Crowds of people, broken glass, plastic cups, and spilled puddles of alcohol created an impartible sea that could only be faced head-on. Max had no choice but to submerge himself into the waves and become one with it all.

Early on in the night, Max took interest in a woman by the bar, a leather-clad dominatrix type. “I’m forming a- a band, you know,” he shouted over the music ringing in his ears, downing a shot. He had already lost count of how many that had been. “We’re gonna be huge.”

“A lot of people form bands in LA, hon,” Her laugh breathed cigarette smoke into Max’s face.

Another shot. The music pulsed like an erratic bass heartbeat in Max’s ears. “We’ll do real hardcore stuff. No pop, real good old-fashioned punk music.”

The woman did not get a chance to reply, and instead suddenly jumped in surprise at something that seemed just behind Max, only seconds before Max himself was just as suddenly attacked from behind, a heavy weight slamming into his back and hands grabbing tight around his shoulders. His thoughts slowed by alcohol enough that the reaction was hazy and slow for what should have been a rather shocking occurrence, he turned, dazed, to see a friend of his, another punkish guy around his age who he had connected with via the world of underground music.

“His ass isn’t actually that fat, it’s just all swollen from being spanked all the time. He’s really into that sort of thing; turns him on!” the newcomer slurred drunkenly to the dominatrix, his voice cracking as he tried to yell over the music and breaking repeatedly into an incoherent, inebriated giggle. He then gave Max’s arm a squeeze. “How’s life been treating you, Maxie?”

As Max opened his mouth to reply, the woman he had been speaking with stood up and stretched. “Well, I’m going to check out the fetish rooms. It was nice talking with you.” She dropped the stub of her cigarette onto a tray on the bar. “And don’t forget: This is Hollywood, sweetie. People are looking for something wicked and new, not good and old-fashioned. Good luck on your music.”

The night wore on. Max hung out for a bit with the punk man at the bar, chatting drunkenly about life, objecting to any drugs under the guise that he had work the next morning. He actually did, in fact, have work the next morning, but that was less the reason that he was avoiding any mind-altering substances than the fact that he simply was not keen on making more of a mess of himself than he already was while surrounded by a bunch of Angeleno strangers, not tonight. A few more drinks and it did not take Max long to lose his friend entirely as he found himself running to the dancefloor, eager to congregate with the masses as the spike of frantic, dizzying energy given to him by the alcohol his brain was drowning in became impossible to resist. He found a pretty girl with bleached white hair and thick, red eyeliner to dance with.

 _“...I’m Jesus Christ on ecstasy…”_ the lyrics of the current song growled out of the club’s powerful speakers, shaking every dancer to their core, causing eardrums already battered by the night’s noise to quake.

As a song that brought an especially large tidal wave of a crowd to the dancefloor came to its thunderous end, the girl offered Max a blunt that had been passed to her by someone even deeper into the massive sea of people. In a haze, Max accepted it, after which he became very aware of his own body, his own heart, his own breathing, even amidst the human ocean he was swimming in and out of. Every blaring, thumping beat of every song that he moved to felt slower, longer, more intentional — a deafening, almost stressful clarity against the alcohol. His heartbeat seemed to thud against his chest and his bones trembled to the same rhythm as the deafening roar of the music.

This was the closest thing to religion Max could imagine. He felt the sanctity of the sacraments, the congregation, the communion. He felt something close to holy, his mind a haze, the world around him a near-incoherent blur, the lightning flashes of rainbow lighting the dance floor in a heavenly glow that haloed the clubbers like they were angels, the throb of the music a prayer that shook him to his core. He was removed entirely from the plane of existence that everyday life trapped him in; he had ascended to a realm that felt astral, spiritual, divine. The DJs, the dancers, the live musicians up on their altars, they must have felt like priests, prophets, perhaps saints or even God Himself, Max thought.

By now, time was lost on Max, the ending of songs and the start of new ones seemingly the only reference he had to ground him in reality. And even that was becoming harder to parse, as the DJs created smooth, nearly seamless transitions between each track, the music an unending pulse accompanied by bass that racked his body with tremulous vibration. The crowd was a blur of motion distorted by flashing colors and as he continued dancing he ended up being tossed about, person to person, as he bumped into them and was all but flung into the next, like a drunken game of human pinball, too exhausted and dizzy to properly right his balance. In part, it was the alcohol, he knew, that had left him in such a state, but he knew that it was near-equally the intensity of the moment, the hypnotic, nearly spiritual quality of the Los Angeles nightclub atmosphere, leaving him entranced until he had danced himself to exhaustion.

It was likely also this equation that would cause him to end up in the men’s room soon after, hands gripping the grimy toilet rim, puking into the single stall there. It was a horrible feeling, not one that he was unfamiliar with but certainly one that he would never quite overcome. The immediate physical sensation was terrible enough, the burning and tearing of his throat, the thick, heavy throb of illness deep in his neck, the taste of whatever had been lingering in his stomach brought back up with acidic bile — but there was also the embarrassment, his own retching intermingled with the sound of men pissing into urinals around him, the awareness that they were certainly hearing him, thinking about how there was some poor bastard who had gone harder than he could handle and was now suffering the pathetic consequences of his own pathetic actions. Max thrust his surely germ-infested finger deep into the back of his throat, scraping against it and forcing up whatever else he could, keen on expelling as much alcohol as possible now that he had started the process, maybe avoiding the worst of a hangover tomorrow, at the very least.

Someone knocked on the door. Max forced himself up, flushed, and walked out of the stall wearily, past a man eyeing him with what he could only guess was sympathy. _Humiliating,_ he thought. He trudged to one of the sinks. The mirrors were practically entirely covered by an array of stickers and graffiti and etchings that had been built up over the years, blocking out most of his own reflection, but he could still see fragments, the clamminess of his skin, the sweat that glistened under the dim restroom lights, the streaks of eyeliner down his cheeks from sweat as well as the tears that had formed involuntarily while throwing up.

As he turned on the faucet to wash his hands, Max also splashed some water onto his face, attempting to clean himself up a bit. He blinked bleary eyes, his throat sore and the rest of his body beginning to ache. He splashed more water, this time in an attempt to wake himself up some, bring some clarity to a mind still wading through alcoholic sludge. His mood was as dampened as his face now and his mouth tasted like vomit, and he sucked in through his nose, trying to unclog it after puking had made it begin to run, and rubbed his eyes, causing more of his eyeliner to smear. The bathroom sink baptism only served only to make him even more aware of how much of a mess he was.

Max turned away in frustration, snorting at himself, a little half-sarcastic half-laugh.at the absurdity of the situation. Not just the immediate moment, standing here in some dingy club bathroom. The absurdity of the whole thing, of his moving out here against the wishes of anyone who had any hopes for his future with a fanciful dream of music and stardom only to end up trapped in Adult Bookstore Purgatory, his only reprieve found in the form of the chaos of the club scene, his income going directly from work to alcohol that did nothing but leave him ending the night where he was now, drunk and sick and anticipating a hangover.

Sighing, Max looked up again to stare at the mirror once more, his eyes glazing over his own face and instead focusing in now on the decorations that framed him. Mind wandering alongside his eyes, he thought about the possibility of, someday, slapping a sticker onto the bathroom mirror of his own band logo to join all the rest. It was an emblem of triumph, of conquering Los Angeles, to adorn club bathroom walls alongside all of the struggling and starving artists who had come before, with dreams that felt too big even for a city as vast as this one.

A hazy part of Max’s mind pondered such a future for a moment. Then he sighed to himself, splashed more water onto his face, shook his head, and walked out. 

  
**IV. ...And This Is What The Devil Does**

Sometimes Los Angeles felt less like a desert oasis and more like a mirage.

Hope could turn to sand so easily here; it took so little to believe in so much and it took even less to be let down.

Max had sobered up quite a bit by the time that he had arrived back in his apartment. It was late now, and he had work tomorrow, but he felt restless, on edge for no reason, even after making himself a late night snack in hopes of calming some of his nerves and sobering his brain. There were pros and cons to living alone — most of the time, Max was grateful that he did not have any roommates. The freedom was nice, especially given the fact that he knew his guitar practice could become grating for others easily, as well as his lifestyle frequently leading to him arriving home in the middle of the night, strung out on or inebriated by something or other. But it also left him, in moments like this, very aware of himself. At work he was surrounded by people, people he could very often posit himself as superior to. He wasn’t a pervert, he wasn’t a nasty old man looking to jerk off alone in the back of a porn shop, he wasn’t a loser unable to get a real sexual partner or a nervous virgin gawking at fleshlights like they had the capacity for murder… But alone in his apartment, it was just him and the choices he made, and the choices he had already made that got him here in the first place.

Now, there were a number of things he could do with the rest of his night. Max thought over the options in his head. He could jerk off. He could sleep. But he was not in a particularly sexy mood, and he could not envision managing to fall asleep in the near future. His brain was still moving too quickly, too filled with other thoughts, and he dreaded making the morning come any sooner. Instead, he opted for a third, more criminal option, and walked to his bedside table. He fished around in it until he found a small plastic capsule where he kept the leftovers from a sheet of acid he had bought a while back, now down to just about half a dozen tabs. He took two out, placed them on his tongue, and then turned off the light and lay back in his bed, getting comfortable as he waited. 

For a moment Max was in total darkness, but his eyes quickly adjusted as the room around him began to take on its familiar shape, silhouettes emerging from the shadows. His eyes wandered over everything. The belongings, the abundant amount of posters that plastered the walls, were solely his, it mattered only if he and he alone liked the bands and films they depicted. His taste, his opinions, his decisions were the final jurisdiction for every inch of the apartment, just as they were the final jurisdiction in his decision to move here, to live a life of wild imaginative daydreams of glory and fame in the concrete wilds of LA.

The thought made Max nauseous, although it also might have been the acid starting to kick in, his muscles clenching and his jaw feeling heavy. He remained very still, waiting, eyes transfixed now on the popcorn ceiling, the strange patterns it cast in the darkness trembling a little, his vision doubling up only the slightest bit. He rubbed the blanket beneath him with the tips of his fingers, drawing circles in the soft fabric, and took in long, deep breaths, willing himself to relax and sink into whatever altered state of consciousness the drug was planning to throw him into.

Soon enough the effects started to take hold. The scattered silhouette of the popcorn ceiling became animate, beginning to swell and spin and fractal into patterns over Max’s head. Shadow figures and bursts of rainbows flickered in the corners of his eyes. The walls breathed and pushed inward, closing him into the small prison that was his apartment. The posters on his walls, each one hung up with love to create an endless collage of things he adored, all took on lives and personalities of their own, colors popping where there had once been only cheap-printer monotony and the drawings and logos and photos of various bands coming to life, the images contorting as if he was staring between dozens of mirrors in a carnival funhouse.

It was one of those nights where Max felt that the main objective of his trip was to remain a few feet above his own brain, avoiding the anxieties that permeated through his thoughts in his daily plane of conscious reality at all cost. He had been doing pretty well so far, but his concentrations were abruptly demolished by a long, loud wail from outside. Distorted by the acid, it sounded like some sort of lonely, sad howl of a dying animal. It lingered for a long while, slowly growing quieter, fading out like the end of a song, and it was only when the sound was so faint that he could not be entirely sure that he was not only hallucinating the remnants of it that Max realized that it had been a police siren. This realization hit him so suddenly that it seemed to almost sober him up for a moment and he sat up a little, attempting to get a change in perspective.

There was a weird unfairness to it, Max thought. All day, every day, police cars and firetrucks and ambulances went speeding down the city streets, blaring their sirens and flashing lights, and the vast majority of the population would have no idea what was even going on. Had some crime been committed? A car crash? Had someone died, or perhaps been murdered? Max must have heard hundreds, if not thousands, of sirens since moving to Los Angeles so many years ago. Emergency vehicles sped past during his walk to and from work, sirens blared from outside of the sex shop and outside of his apartment. Day or night, no matter where he was or what he was doing, someone somewhere had run into some sort of emergency, something that could very well be life altering, life ruining, perhaps even life ending. And he could do nothing but sit here and experience only a fragment of it, only a piece of the situation, so distant from it that he would never know the destination of the endless stream of sirens that screamed past him each day.

 _I should get into crime fiction,_ Max’s acid-induced brain decided, a half-coherent revelation. He was sure he could find plenty of it that took place in Los Angeles. It could give him more to imagine, feed more into his LSD-laden mind so that he could better envision what the end destination of those countless vehicles could possibly be. And it would give him something to read while he was at work, too. He chuckled and smiled to himself, amused with his own ingenuity.

Max was excited now, restless to begin this new hobby of his, but he knew now was not the time. It was the middle of the night and he was tripping, and he stood up in a feverish stupor that made the room spin and lights and shadows flicker and bounce across the walls. He looked around, vision hazy as his eyes traveled over the posters again. He saw his own former band poster on the wall, where a photo of himself had been printed in black against the pink paper it had been pasted on. His image was distorting in all sorts of strange ways, his eyes growing smaller and then larger, his lips twitching upwards into a Cheshire Cat grin, the devil horn hair rustling and swelling as if it was blowing in nonexistent wind.

Why was he standing? Max tried to retrace his whirling thoughts. He looked down at his hands, his fingers too long and then too short and then too thick and then too thin, watching the veins of his arms swell up and breathe and pulse, his tattoos twist and squirm on his own flesh. Then, as he turned his hand over to stare at his palm, his heart practically stopped in shock at the sight of a great big blot of bright red blood smeared across the underside of his wrist and trailing up to his palm, like some bizarre and gory stigmata. He looked closer, confused, squinting dilated eyes. There was no pain, and no obvious sign of injury. Was he hallucinating? It was too real to be caused only by the LSD, he thought — he had certainly never had a hallucination this vivid from it before. The acid in his system was causing visual distortion to happen before his very eyes even still, the red of the blood shifting from a bright pink to a deep, dark scarlet even as he stared, deep in his concern, and yet it was not going away, not even when he looked away and looked back, not even when he shut his eyes for ten seconds.

Then at once Max remembered the woman at the store today, and the way she had written her name and number on his wrist in red marker, and he came to the disoriented realization that it must have gotten smudged off somehow, likely at the club earlier.

Standing there alone in his apartment, Max began to laugh aloud to himself.

In good spirits from the hilarity of the fear he had felt only to come to such a mundane answer, Max realized now that he had spent the entirety of his trip in silence, save for the passing police sirens that had guided his thoughts for a moment earlier, and he was craving music. He all but leapt to his CDs, giggling a bit as he began to go through them, looking for music that would keep his mood up as the inevitable peak of the trip hit him — soon. He could feel it, the gradual increase of every sense, every thought, every feeling. It was all amplified, and steadily intensifying still. The album art of each CD swam and breathed and coiled and contorted before his eyes. He imagined the day that his own album art would join them all, and stupid punks who move to Los Angeles dreaming of success, fueled by passion for music and refusal to back down against the odds, could pick it up and stare at it while peaking on an acid tab.

After a moment longer of distracted staring, Max eventually settled on an album that both caught his eye for its bright colors as well as the way that the title spoke to his mood. He stood up to take it to his speakers, not caring if it woke his neighbors. As he gently took the disc from its casing, he snickered to himself again as the words KOOLER THAN JESUS writhed before his eyes in searing hot pink.


End file.
